Marvel Tried Really Hard To Keep Kingpin’s Casting In Hawkeye Secret

Marvel Studios has used every tool left at their disposal to keep the casting of Kingpin in Hawkeye a secret. This covers everything in production, including costume designer Michael Crow. While talking to Insider about preparing Vincent D’Onofrio’s look for Hawkeye, Crow revealed that when he initially asked for some information on how to go-ahead for a “surprise character” like Kingpin, he ended up receiving a call from Marvel producer Trinh Tran. She told Crowe to not worry about anything right now, but to just keep it in mind for later as “it’s a big secret.” So, there was a massive air of mystery behind the scenes, but some of the biggest people also knew. It looked like D’Onofrio didn’t get fitted for his costume until quite late. And when he did, D’Onofrio left quite an impression on the whole crew. He even had some more input on how his portrayal of Kingpin would differ from the Netflix series.

Here’s what Michael Crowe had to say:

“I didn’t know until about maybe halfway through filming,” Crow revealed. “I think in the original script it was scripted as another character. Like something from the [Matt] Fraction [Hawkeye] comic books, but not Kingpin. I started asking questions about what we wanted to do, how do we wanna approach it? And I got an immediate phone call back from Trinh Tran [Marvel Studios Producer]. And she just said: ‘We’ll talk about that a little bit later. We’re not ready to talk about that yet, but it’s not gonna be that [the character from the script]. It’s a big secret.'”

“Once I was told that Vincent was coming back, we had about two months to create costumes for Kingpin,” he added. “We did a lot of long-distance fittings because [D’Onofrio} was working on another show in New York at the time. I didn’t see him until the very last minute and I mean, he is truly a lovely gentleman. A pleasure to work with.”

“Vincent was integral in creating the character and a lot of the ideas stemmed from what he wanted to do with the character and you know, things that he had always wanted to take directions,” Crow admitted. “He wanted to approach the character as a little more like down and out and grittier than he had previously been presented in the other show.”